"Not necessarily," objected the head of the Bureau of Exploration. "They may be alien--they must be utterly alien to inhabit a planet that far from Sol. What form they take, or what their chemistry might be, I have no idea. Furthermore, I don't care, and if I ask about it, it'll be academically only. They exist, they have science. They do not like us. Perhaps they know of us, and realize that any traffic with us of the inner worlds is impossible." "Their attitude in firing upon the _Orionad_ gives us no alternative," said Mantley. He turned to Garlinger, and asked: "We haven't heard from the Bureau of Maneuvers, yet. Have any ideas?" "It'll be out and out war," said Garlinger. "I'm certain that we made no warlike move in merely visiting them. They've been in preferred isolation, and now that we've discovered them, they fire on us, without provocation. My guess is that we'd not only be better off going in armed, but we'd best prepare for countermeasures, counterattack, and all the trimmings. Now that they've been smoked out, I'll bet they won't sit there on their icy planet and wait for us to come a-blasting." "How and why have they developed space travel," asked Greggor, "if they care nothing for interplanetary commerce?" "Their moons," suggested Kane. "There were signs of inhabitation on all three of them." "This is going to be more difficult than I thought. The problem of breaching a planet alone is one that has seldom been tried. But if Mephisto has three armed moons, that's another item to consider. Well, fellows, it has never been Terra's way to go in with less than all we have. If we have ten million men that never see Mephisto from anything but the viewports of the transports, we'll be better off than if we were blasted to every last man for not having enough of them. It'll be a full-scale attack, gentlemen." "More than that, Garlinger, we'll get lots of practise." "Meaning?" "Some day we're going to be forced into fighting Mars on an all-out basis. This will be excellent experience. I believe that Mars will be the harder to fight, gentlemen. After all, knowing your enemy makes the battle easier--and they know us very well. So if we correct our mistakes on Mephisto, and take the resulting plan to Mars, we may break this deadlock between Mars and Terra forever." "No one here doubts that it will be an all-out attack," said Mantley. "We'll have to mobilize--and that's your job, Donigan." "Yup," drawled Donigan. "After you boys get all done making your plans, you hand it to me. Uh-huh--and after I get 'em, it's war with a capital W. Gentlemen, is it your wish that the Bureau of Warfare take over from here on in?" "It is."